A pillar of European social policies since 1986, the issue of health and safety has been the subject of numerous regulations, precisely to ensure that it wouldn’t be an adjustment variable or a vector to imbalance competition. Laurent Vogel claims it is no longer the case: workers’ health and safety has been lost to competitiveness. (Ref. 130587)
- In May, the Commission launched a public consultation to do a report on the 2007-12 Community strategy on health and safety at work, and to see if a new European strategy was needed and what framework of action it should start. Mr. Vogel, what can you tell us about the outcome of this 2007-12 strategy?
Laurent Vogel. With this European policy, the Member States were encouraged to develop national health and safety strategies. There was real ambition in some countries while in others the process was more formal. The downside is that the Commission didn’t stick to its agenda. For all important matters, you could say that it was paralyzed (notably on the fight against work-related cancer, muscular skeletal disorders or active ageing).
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